The Head of Conservation for BirdLife Europe & Central Asia explains how intensive agriculture has made farmland birds one of the most threatened bird groups in Europe. Once upon a time, they were all around us – sights and sounds as familiar as the dusky skies their flocks danced in or the wind whistling through […]
Tag: Partridge
Phillby’s Partridge
Philby’s Partridge Alectoris philbyi is a rare resident of the south-west highlands. The best sites for locating the species are the terrace fields near Tanoumah, the dry scrub covered hillsides on Jebal Souda plateau and the area around Al Baha. They prefer juniper dominated habitats where rocky knolls & clearings occur and ocurs from 1500 […]
The Gamebird Industry: It’s Not a Game. It’s a Disgrace
Every year in Britain, around 40 million pheasants and partridges are mass-produced like commercial poultry so that they can be shot down by wealthy ‘guns’. This bloody and brutal end to their lives is the final insult. From birth, they are kept in cages, sheds and pens, in which disease and death are a daily […]
UK wagtails face long-term decline
The three species of wagtail that breed in the UK are suffering long-term declines, a study has revealed. Yellow wagtails, grey wagtails and pied wagtails are all in decline, according to the annual breeding bird survey’s latest report, though conservationists say the reasons for the reductions are not clear. Yellow wagtails, farmland birds which migrate […]
Alarming disappearances among our familiar countryside birds
The latestState of the UK’s Birdsreport, published today, reveals many of our most familiar countryside birds are undergoing sweeping changes with some experiencing ‘plummeting population declines’, compared with the 1990s. It is now known that in some parts of the UK these birds have disappeared completely. A section of the report looks at the UK’s […]
New arrivals…
Like every year this time is very thrilling. Each day brings its surprises and there are plenty of new birds throughout and also a growing number of birders aretravellingaround and bring more updates from the field. Last weekend, the IBRCE ringing station has started its season operation and we have 2 new volunteers – Markus […]
Wildlife Slaughter in South Dakota
Imagine my amazement this morning to see a Google advertisement inviting me to hunt wildlife in South Dakota – and I live in Switzerland! It seems that South Dakota is being promoted as the ideal tourist destination for wildlife hunting. So I clicked on the advertisement and within a few minutes realized that wildlife hunting […]